


Straightway Dangerous

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan)
Genre: Arkham Asylum, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-08
Updated: 2013-11-08
Packaged: 2017-12-31 21:30:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1036606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is a ghost in a hospital made of shuffling blue-grey ghosts. They are part of the walls, and part of the floors, and outside the sky is the same colour; and they are a part of that too. - Jonathan Crane and the Joker in Arkham.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Your Boldness Stands Alone Among the Wreck

**Author's Note:**

> MUCH madness is divinest sense  
> To a discerning eye;  
> Much sense the starkest madness.  
> 'T is the majority  
> In this, as all, prevails.  
> Assent, and you are sane;  
> Demur, — you're straightway dangerous,  
> And handled with a chain.
> 
> \- Emily Dickenson

Jonathan’s wrists are green and black. They rest in his lap, looking delicate, too thin to hold up his hands. His hands are very heavy. Perhaps that’s the reason his wrists are so sore. The bruises edge out from under a blue-grey shirt that matches his blue-grey trousers, and the placid, soothing, blue-grey of the walls around him. He is a ghost in a hospital made of shuffling blue-grey ghosts. They are part of the walls, and part of the floors, and outside the sky is the same colour; and they are a part of that too.

Jonathan watches the shadows from the bars on the window creep across the floor towards him. Never when he’s looking, no one even notices but him, but soon they’ll be on him. He drifts for a while when he blinks and gets lost in the maze of the veins on the insides of his eyelids. He can see every molecule in his blood slip past. He can see distinctions, the oxygen, and the hemoglobin, the platelets, red and white cells, he can see the toxin, he can see the medication. Jonathan knows the rotten core of himself, and thinks that this knowing might make him God.

His eyes shutter open and the very edges of the shadows are right there, brushing softly against the meager protection of his soft canvas shoes with no laces, and no one has noticed. 

Jonathan tries to speak, but he cannot; his face belongs to someone else.

*~*~*~*

They give him something in the evenings and Jonathan goes out with the lights, then wakes up approximately four hours later. He doesn’t dream. It isn’t that he dreams and then forgets upon waking. He doesn’t dream. He would remember if he’d found his subconscious.

Jonathan lies awake an hour or so after midnight, and tries to think about escape. The room is small, he thinks, but the only light is a mustard-gas yellow staining the wall opposite the window and it’s hard to calculate square footage without taking his eyes off the bars on either side of him, sliding down on the left to scrape across the floor. 

It doesn’t matter how small the room is, the bed is narrow and hard, and the pillow is flat under his head. His pajamas are soft, washed out, worn down to the same comforting dullness as the sheets and the day-room. The straps around his wrists and ankles are soft, too. They pad them carefully because he’s going to be here a long time and otherwise he might hurt himself. Hurting yourself is against the rules.

Jonathan tries to think about escape but mostly he just waits for what will come next. 

Very rarely he is corrupted by the unrelenting encroachment of the light and he is wracked with terror. He starts screaming and the only escape is the needle they stick into his thigh when they finally grow tired of his noise.

Most nights though, Jonathan gets lost long before that happens and he can only blame the things inside his own head for that. He becomes nothing then, just another soul rattling its chains in Hell. 

Jonathan comes to, some short time before the day begins, drenched in sweat with blood in his mouth, body aching, bruised wrists. He wants to ask why no one comes to save him, but most nights he doesn’t cry out, and he is afraid to find out what violations are meted out on his body while he is gone.

They give him something in the morning, to ease him back into the blue-grey haze of the day, as he is stripped, and showered, and dressed, and shuffled back into the day-room.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan’s wrists are green and black and he can see hues of yellow at the edges. One sleeve is up higher than usual, bunched around his forearm, but his hands are too heavy to do anything about it. 

“I know who you are.” 

Jonathan vaguely comprehends that someone is talking to him, but he doesn’t care. The voice is not informing him, just puzzling out the mystery of Jonathan’s existence. An _I’ve seen you somewhere before_ , not a revelation to be shared with Jonathan. Jonathan doesn’t need a revelation, he knows who he is.

A body comes too close to him, slotting into his space, pushing his knees apart so it can fit between them, confirming the existence of the chair that Jonathan is on, trapping him between the curve of the back, and the width of shoulders and the smell of something other than antiseptic. There is a warm hand on Jonathan’s forearm, just above where his sleeve is bunched uncomfortably. The fingers curl around him and he can feel the strength there, and the catch of peeling calluses against his shirt.

Jonathan doesn’t focus, but he gets the impression of shorn curls, bright brown eyes, and the soft press of a bowed upper lip against the lower. Whoever this is is something of a mouthbreather.

“You’re the Scarecrow…aren’t you?”

“Now, John,” the dingy white voice of one of the orderlies says. “Don’t pester Jonathan. And we don’t use those names here, do we, dear?”

Jonathan blinks, and when he has come out of himself again he is inches from those startlingly brown eyes. He turns his face away. The hand on his arm tightens for a moment, but then there is a tug and his sleeve is down where it ought to be.

“I’m feeling a sense of impotent rage that there are, uh, bugs in the wall and there is nothing that I can do about it,” the owner of the hand, and eyes, and warm-body smell says. Some fragile part of Jonathan knows that this is a lie, and that group therapy sessions with the criminally insane is a criminally insane idea.

Loud voices follow, movement, and the man who lied slips away from Jonathan. Jonathan is not concerned with the fallout from the paranoid group-members who fear government plots and spies in the ranks. There are things in the walls, but not secret devices to eavesdrop on lunatics. That is foolishness.

Neither is he concerned by the accusations of being something he is not. Jonathan knows what he is. He is part of the walls, and part of the floors, and outside the sky is the same colour; and he is a part of that too. He is the ghost of God in a hospital made of blue-grey ghosts. 

*~*~*~*

Jonathan’s lunch is at twelve-thirty in another room filled with cold-handed orderlies, and plastic chairs, and plastic cutlery. He is the second shift, the ones who take the longest. This would not be the case if he wasn’t given more pills an hour before that. 

“Okay, sweetheart,” the orderly says, “try and get this down, I got you.”

A straw slips between his lips and when he is done, a towel pats his chin and neck to mop up the spill of juice and spit. There is not enough left of him to feel shame.

*~*~*~*

“I am feeling _very_ , heh, helpful.” Jonathan knows this voice from somewhere but it’s not until the hands are on him, steadying him, one under his elbow, one curved around his waist, that he remembers. The liar. The one who says he knows who Jonathan is.

They are in the walled in yard getting fresh air. Jonathan is good, so he has privileges like outside. He would be bad if it meant he got to go inside again, but he isn’t sure how. He gets more medication after lunch as well. It’s difficult to put one foot in front of the other, and harder still to remember how to get around the yard. 

The orderly retreats and Jonathan’s hand comes off the wall as the liar tugs him away, closer to the center where it’s much more like being outside than it was where Jonathan was. He is tucked in securely against this man’s warm body though and no longer feels as though he could crumple like dirty laundry and lie in a pile on the ground. There is something animal in the scent of sweat and breath that has Jonathan turning his face towards it this time, seeking out the quiet certainty that no matter which way around the yard he walks this man won’t change. He knows himself, this liar, and Jonathan isn’t sure who that makes him. Either of them.

“You don’t say much, do you, straw man?” the liar says.

John. They called him John.

Jonathan tries to say, no, no he doesn’t speak because he has nothing to say to these cretins, but can’t because of the medication.

“You were the first,” John says, like a secret in Jonathan’s ear. His voice is rough and complicated. “I thought you were just a dealer…even I’ve been known to be wrong. Before he showed up, you’d been wearing that mask.” They stop walking and John takes Jonathan’s face in his hands and makes him look at him. “You helped to create,” he waves an expansive hand, “all this.”

Jonathan tries to focus but the effort it would take to meet John’s eyes is too much, he cannot raise himself that high. He finds himself looking at John’s mouth instead and realizes the softness of his lower lip is bisected by a Y-shaped scar. As he watches, John tongues at the scar, hands still warm on Jonathan’s face, then he disappears.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan doesn’t like the bathrooms here. They’re colder than the rest of the ward. John shuts the door behind them, but there isn’t any lock to turn.

Jonathan isn’t allowed in here by himself, no one is. John seems fairly sure of himself though, and he manhandles Jonathan into one of the showers, gets one arm around his midsection, and sticks the fingers of his other hand down Jonathan’s throat.

“You’re going to do what I tell you,” John says, and Jonathan could swear he can feel that scar against his ear, even as he hangs from John’s arm, heaving and shaking. “I’m going to make everything make sense again, so you’re going to do _exactly_ what I tell you.”

He drags Jonathan over to a sink and turns it on, shoves Jonathan’s head down and tells him to drink. Jonathan manages to swallow at least a little water before John lets him go. He slumps to the floor, feeling weightless and queasy. He is able to look up though, and when John turns around from running the shower, he can see John’s face, the right side pulled up like a smile and the left like a series of brackets gouged into his cheek. Behind him, the water washes away the mess of Jonathan’s lunch and his afternoon pills.

“You’re going to start cheeking your medication. Just tuck it away” John says. “Get up.” Jonathan tries, he does, but he can’t figure out where he begins and the floor ends. John hauls him up by one arm. “You cheek them away and then you come and find me,” John says.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan manages to stand, but he can’t find John, and he’s being taken to his bed. They strap him down when they leave the room and Jonathan waits a few seconds and then spits his medication out onto the pillow next to him. The lights go out, but Jonathan is still awake.

“I hear you’re a, uh, screamer,” John says, slipping into his room. The doors are locked. Jonathan knows this, he used to walk up and down these corridors at night when he was stuck on a particular patient or strain of gas. No one should be able to get in except the orderlies.

John gets up onto the narrow bed with Jonathan, knee digging into Jonathan’s side, heavy on Jonathan’s hips, and picks up the pills. “Do you know what these are?” 

He tongues his scars like they’re new, Jonathan notices. Or like an old nervous habit. He wants to put his fingers inside John’s mouth and find out how thick the scaring is.

John snaps his fingers in front of Jonathan’s face to get his attention. “Front and center, cupcake,” he says, voice harder than usual. “Do you know what these are?” John doesn’t untie him. That’s probably wise. Jonathan isn’t sure what he would do if he could move. “Try this,” John says, giggling, and Jonathan takes the pills that John gives him. He dry-swallows them, hoping vaguely that they don’t stick in his chest and make him sick. John lies down, half on top of him. Jonathan feels anxious and awake, but John is heavy and warm, weighing him down so he can breathe.

“The thing is,” John says, pressing at Jonathan’s bruises until he hisses and squirms. “The thing is, that you’ve just given in and I’m disappointed, really. I can fix that, I can.” He leans back so Jonathan can see the white-pink of the scars, the curl of his permanent smile. “I can make you into something strange and marvelous.”

Jonathan lies quietly and his body shakes beyond his control while John tugs at his too-long hair and thumbs his stubble, presses into the needle tracks on the inside of his elbows and on his thighs. His fingers twitch and he makes a fist, curls his toes, and stares at the black where the ceiling is, remembering the edges where he ends and the ward begins.


	2. I Hope My Smile Can Distract You

The room is bare and too bright. Jonathan is sitting on a chair that has been sat in by too many people. The seat is curved inwards, settling him too low, and he can feel the springs inside. He is on the wrong side of an ugly desk. 

Jonathan feels exposed and he reaches compulsively to shove his glasses up his nose. When he remembers he doesn’t have those on, he jerks his hand away to smooth a tie that isn’t there, and finds his hands empty and bereft of something to do with them. He does the rounds a few times over, a nervous tic. It irritates him in a vague sort of way. He knows his appointed doctor is making a note of it. Of everything he does. 

“You seem to be adjusting to the new regimen very well.”

Jonathan’s appointed doctor is an idiot. It’s been almost a whole month since John started swapping meds with Jonathan. He hasn’t taken most of those meds in weeks, weaning himself slowly off them. He is – was – a doctor himself and he’s fairly certain that he’s about eight different kinds of incurable crazy. Jonathan has decided he’s pretty much okay with that.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan sits in the dayroom and watches the others without interest. The paint on the wall is peeling off, chalky flakes, a little yellow from nicotine staining, back when you could smoke inside, back before someone decided letting lunatics smoke was a bad idea. He watches one of his fellow inmates, Oscar, pick up the shards and put them in his mouth. There’s probably lead in the paint.

Lead poisoning. If left untreated would cause nausea, pain in the stomach and intestines, chest pain, headache, possible insomnia, possible, if not unlikely, seizure and coma. Oscar would have to eat a lot of paint for that to occur but it could happen. No one was likely to notice him eating the flakes and the wall was unlikely to stop shedding any time soon.

“Candy time, open up.” Third shift, Laurence. He didn’t like Jonathan when he worked under him. He likes him a lot less now, or perhaps a lot more – depending on how you look at it. “Crane, open your fucking mouth or I’ll have to call the nurses.” 

Jonathan opens his mouth without protest. He’d prefer to take the little paper cup himself, rattle the pills around and assess what the current head of psychology thinks he’s doing, then take them, but with Laurence, if he wants to tip the drugs down Jonathan’s throat, water be damned, then Jonathan opens his mouth like a good boy and gets it over with.

It isn’t as though Jonathan is taking the pills anyway.

Jonathan sticks out his tongue, lets the man look at the inside of his cheeks, bony fingers digging into the curve of his jaw and smiles a little at the scowl on Laurence’s face.

“Enjoy your round,” Jonathan says. Not because he means it. He rather hopes Laurence will slip on the freshly mopped floors and break his neck, but it seems to give the man the heebie-jeebies when Jonathan is nice to him, so he persists in being friendly.

When no one is looking, Jonathan makes a sound like a cat bringing up a hairball and spits out his pills. After two weeks of having to stick his finger down his oesophagus, he finally mastered the trick of holding them in his throat, rather than swallowing them totally. He stashes his medication in his socks and waits.

*~*~*~*

John is in the bathroom, crouched on one of the countertops, elbows resting on his knees. He’s managed to get his hands on one of the staff labcoats and it flares out behind him like long white wings. His hair is getting longer, dark blond curls, and he is pale and still. The florescent lights overhead combined with the pills Jonathan does take give him a luminous quality, whole body haloed.

If he believed in it, Jonathan would say he looked like the devil. Since he had been labouring under the delusion that he himself was God it makes a certain sort of sense.

Jonathan fishes the drugs out of his socks and slaps them down on the countertop, sharp rattle of health against the cheap ceramic. He leans against the wall, arms folded over his chest. “Risperdal, fluoxetine, clozapine, diazepam, alprazolam,” he says.

It’s a fucking joke is what it is. The idea of putting Valium and Xanax together is laughable. Either they’re trying to test the limits of his ability to mix medication or they’re trying to put him down and keep him there. Possibly permanently. Or it could be that the new head of Arkham is a total incompetent. Jonathan suspects it might be all three.

John cocks his head to one side and then hops down off the counter. “You’re sounding...heh, chatty today,” he says. 

Some days Jonathan talks, some days he doesn’t. Today he is full of nervous tension, and he feels it in his feet, and chest, and throat. He digs his fingers into his arms and shrugs.

John comes closer, his heavy tilted walk, the curve of bicep and stretch of shoulders, and the four inches he has on Jonathan are never more apparent than when he’s invading Jonathan’s personal space, which he seems to delight in doing, since it makes Jonathan uncomfortable. He backs Jonathan against the wall, crowds him, drugs sitting on his palm between them. 

“Tell me about it, them, anything,” John encourages and doubles the pile with his own unswallowed medication.

Jonathan shrugs again.

Now that he is feeling a little more clearheaded he can piece together what’s happened since he got here. They had strapped him to a gurney and pumped his veins full of the anti-toxin given to all the victims of his gas. He had felt it pushing into his body, seeping in through the IV drip. It hadn’t helped. None of the drugs helped him; they made him worse, reacted badly with his own anti-toxin. He’d spent a week screaming, in terrible fits of fear, before they took him off one of the first drug cocktails.

Now it seems as though they’re just…lazy. The fluoxetine is for Obsessive Compulsive Personality disorder (not to be confused with OCD). He could see how an idiot might think he had it but even if he had displayed a few of the symptoms, they still never interfered with his day to day. Getting a face full of his own fear toxin had “interfered with his daily routine” and he had solved that problem himself, thank you very much.

The alternate diagnosis, or perhaps they think he is both at the same time, of all the absurd things, of schizotypy is equally lazy but seems to be why they’re giving him the clozapine.

Jonathan picks through the drugs in John’s hand and carefully separates them into three piles. One for him, one for John, and one to trade. The latter pile is by far the largest. Jonathan is reducing down to nothing and John only takes things that will help him sleep; he gets bored at night and he rarely sleeps on his own. Mostly he just comes and keeps Jonathan awake, watching him. For a man who is frequently in motion, John has an incredible capacity for stillness. He doesn’t ask what John is trading the drugs for, or with whom he’s trading. He’s doing better, but not enough to care.

John tucks the medication away, stashing it in various bits of clothing and sighs. He thumbs the thin skin under Jonathan’s eye, pressing just a bit too hard, like he’s thinking about what it would take to really dig in and take the eye out. Jonathan stands docile. He feels clammy and out of control and he’s not sure what he’ll do when the fog finally clears.

“Why were you running your toxin as street drugs?” John asks. “Sloppy work, very sloppy work, Scarecrow.” Jonathan tries to shake his head. He’s just getting a handle on himself again, he doesn’t need that now. It’s against the rules. John puts his other thumb under Jonathan’s other eye and presses hard with both, holding him still.

“But then,” John continues, “you’re not a, ah, stupid man, not sane, no, but not, I think, stupid.” He licks his lips and Jonathan feels himself sway forwards, the curve of his shoulder-blades no longer touching the wall. John presses him back again and Jonathan’s hands unfist so he can grab onto John’s wrists. “You had to have known that would be a one way ticket here,” John says. His pulse is strong under Jonathan’s fingers and Jonathan’s whole body shakes with it and the machine-gun fire of John’s laugh.

“Perhaps I needed the money,” Jonathan says. He still has a tab of Valium stashed in his right sock. He wonders if that would help the way his stomach turns over when John examines him and then licks at his own mouth like a decision has been made. 

“No. No, no, no,” John says. “That’s not it, no good at all. Your creation for the crawling masses, for money? You’ll break my heart.” 

“Then what’s your professional medical opinion?” Jonathan asks snidely, holding on tighter.

John doesn’t actually smile very often. Laughing, yes, Jonathan is beginning to think that’s something of a nervous tic, as well as an affectation. He smiles now. “I think you did it...to get caught,” John says. “Which only leaves me with why. _Why_ would doctor Jonathan Crane, why would Scarecrow, want to get caught by Batman? Is it the beatings? Hm. Is it the ears? Is it a blind faith that you just might win if only you confront him one last time? You won’t, by the way.”

Jonathan manages a smile back. “You don’t want the answer,” he says, tipping his head back so he can look at the water stains and cracks in the plaster of the ceiling. “And even if, deep, deep down in your psychosis you’ve convinced yourself that you do, I don’t want to tell you.” His neck is a long line of uncovered skin and he can feel John’s breath there. He wonders if John is the sort to try and tear his throat out.

That seems to annoy John if the way he uses his grip to swing Jonathan around and throw him up against the sinks is any indication. Jonathan’s back will be bruised later, sore and hot when they strap him down tonight. John could hurt him, fairly easily. He’s not sure why John turns around and walks out, graceless thud of his uneven steps.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan and John are sitting on opposite ends of the same sofa when it’s medication time again. They share a look, and John has the audacity to wink at him, lips pursed like he’s blowing a kiss. Subtle, John is not, and Jonathan can’t help but roll his eyes a little.

John treats Arkham like it’s a resort and he’s on a holiday. Like he’s just taking a little break before he has to go back to work. It’s strange and enviable and Jonathan wishes he could see things like that. People have escaped before. He hopes that if John has a plan to get out, that he’ll take Jonathan with him. He isn’t holding his breath. He’s not so stupid as to think that John has any sense of compassion or empathy.

Jonathan accepts his pills without complaint but as they’re handing John his little paper cup he sees the label on the tray: John Doe.

The orderly shuffles away and Jonathan doesn’t remember to spit up his pills until John leans across the sofa and pinches him, hard. John cocks his head to the side, peering curiously at Jonathan. “Oh _Doctor_ ,” he says. “You thought John was my name? Don’t you know who I am?” He’s smiling again, bright wide grin. “I’m kind of a big deal, you know.”

Jonathan swallows the medication. He feels strangely disappointed. He’d expected a lot of different sorts of betrayals, but not this one.

“Hey now, Scarecrow,” John – fucking John Doe – says. “Don’t get your, ah, panties in a twist. I had no idea you were so...” he trails off into explosive laughter. “You didn’t know,” he says, gasping.

Jonathan gets up and takes himself elsewhere.

*~*~*~*

He knows where they keep the keys, and when staff will walk the halls, and when they’ll have snuck into the basement where the old tunnels are to have a smoke. Now that his head is clear, Jonathan finds it laughably easy to get his hands on exactly what he wants. 

John Doe’s paperwork is easy enough to find. They don’t even keep the files in the main office, since there are too many of them. Jonathan is able to sit in the records room, undisturbed, and read.

Jonathan’s been in Arkham for quite some time now; locked up and halfway to catatonic from the drugs they were giving him. He wasn’t exactly keeping up with the news. But now he knows.

*~*~*~*

The Joker is in his own bed for once, when the lights go out. This time Jonathan breaks into his room.

He’s lying on his back on top of the covers, twirling a scalpel in one hand, the rancid yellow of the light outside flashing off the metal with each pass. He doesn’t look up until Jonathan flicks a playing card at him and it bounces off his chest and lands on the floor. And then he barely even glances at it.

“You want to know how I got these scars?” Joker asks.

Jonathan has his own profile he’s writing up in his head of this man. Psychopathic, possible Dissocial Personality Disorder. Histrionic. Masochistic. Sadistic. Tendencies towards pyromania.

Manic. 

Obviously.

Jonathan grabs Joker’s wrist and pins it to the bed, stopping the motion of the scalpel. “The fact that I can predict and profile you,” he says, “makes you far less interesting to me. And no, I could give significantly less of a fuck how you got them. You were abused as a child, tortured as an adult, or self-mutilate, and none of those stories will do more than complete my diagnosis and further bore me.”

He’s not surprised when Joker twists his wrist out from his grip and uses the movement to reverse their positions, pinning Jonathan face down over the bed with his arm up behind his back, Joker leaning on it a little too hard. If he pushes much more Jonathan’s shoulder is going to pop out of joint. Jonathan is wholly unsurprised.

“You should have told me,” Jonathan says, despite the threat of the scalpel up against his cheek.

Joker doesn’t pretend he doesn’t know what Jonathan is talking about. “I honestly thought you knew,” he says. “But you have to admit, it was funny.”

Jonathan sighs. “Either kill me or let me up,” he says. “You’re not going to cut me.”

If the Joker is irritated by Jonathan’s prediction, he doesn’t show it. He lets go and Jonathan rolls over onto his back, legs hanging off the side of the bed. “And spoil that pretty face?” Joker says. “Now that…would be a crime.”


	3. You're a Criminal as Long as You're Mine

“It’s rude to stare,” Joker says, without turning his head. He’s watching one of the other patients – a victim of Jonathan’s gas, incurable, irrelevant – with a speculative look on his face. 

Jonathan is sure that the Joker was rather handsome at some point in his life, before, due to whatever reason he’s telling everyone this week, his face got sliced open and stitched together by ham-handed fools, or himself. In Jonathan’s experience, good looking men don’t mutilate their own faces unless there is a serious self-esteem problem, which he’s fairly certain that Joker doesn’t have, or they’re a very different sort of insane from the symptoms Joker displays. He’s leaning towards some mob affair gone wrong, but there are a myriad of other options.

They’re on opposite sides of the same couch again. No one ever sits between them; it’s a dangerous place to be. Jonathan has his back against one of the arms, seated cross-legged, facing the Joker, who is facing out at the room. The expanse of worn grey-blue fabric between them seems endless and crammed full of all the ways they don’t really like each other very much; how Joker manhandles him and how Jonathan isn’t afraid or impressed.

Jonathan smirks. “I’m insane,” he says. “Can’t be helped.” The shadows on the floor stretch out like fingers, reaching for him, ready to drag him back into his own head, but a glance sends them sucking back to where they were before. He ignores them now. Soon he’ll control them.

The Joker looks at him then, an intense scrutiny that Jonathan doesn’t much care for. “Your trauma is extremely pedestrian, Scarecrow,” he says.

He’s right. Jonathan’s history is not exceedingly unusual, and his genetic makeup has predisposed him towards violence and sadism. His own psychosis is extremely dull, which is why Jonathan doesn’t bother to spend much time contemplating it. He calls himself Scarecrow and uses a fear toxin, it’s not rocket science.

Then again, neither is calling yourself ‘the Joker.’

“I made you,” Jonathan points out mildly. “You said yourself that I’m part of the reason he put on the suit, the beginning of masked villains, as they’re calling us, and since you’re a product of what he did, then it follows that you, in your own way, are also my creation.” He wonders what frightens the Joker.

Joker doesn’t ask who ‘he’ is. Who else would it be? Not that idiot Harvey Dent, that’s for certain. The fool, if Arkham gossip could be believed, tipped his hand far too early.

“But it wasn’t you,” the Joker says, and licks at the corner of his mouth. “Not you, the other one, isn’t that right? Ra’s Al Ghul. Yes, of course. The real, ah, mastermind.” Jonathan isn’t the only sadist on this particular couch. “Oh,” the Joker says. “I’m sorry. Struck a nerve?” 

Jonathan slides across the sofa so they’re sitting right next to each other and lowers his voice. “I provided the League of Shadows with everything they needed for their plan. They were nothing more than glorified henchmen. And in addition to what has passed, I know four different exits out of here, where they didn’t find some of my gas, where they keep your suit and my mask. I know where we can get our hands on incendiary materials, so ask yourself if you really want to continue in this vein.”

Joker fits a hand around the fading bruises on Jonathan’s wrist. “Which one of them was it that fucked you?” he asks. “Henri Ducard, or Bats? Or both?” He holds on when Jonathan tries to snatch his arm back, laughing. “I think it was both. Is that, ah, why you let him catch you? Why doctor, I’m surprised at you.”

*~*~*~*

Solitary is very boring.

There are no windows, and there is nothing to do but stand, or sit on yet another narrow cot and think about what he’s done.

If Jonathan had wanted to avoid solitary, he probably shouldn’t have tried to beat Joker into a bloody pulp. He’s fairly certain that Joker simply cannot help himself from saying the most infuriating thing in any given situation. Rising to that is a mistake, and one that Jonathan is hoping he’ll manage to avoid making again. 

He sits on the floor, leans back against the wall, stretches his legs out, crosses them at the ankle. It’s probably about time to try and break out.

*~*~*~*

It takes Joker longer than usual to find him, since Jonathan isn’t waiting in his room this time. He’s in the bathroom, waiting by the sinks. With the lights off and the light from the windows behind him, Jonathan controls the scene.

He hears Joker before he sees him, his awkward, uneven gait. The door creaks open and then shuts with a soft hiss. Jonathan can hear the Joker breathing. He has a knife now, not just a scalpel, and Joker’s back in the lab coat again. They keep taking it from him, and he keeps finding new ways to get it back. 

Jonathan is in soft grey-blue trousers and shirt. He is weaponless. He isn’t afraid. Now that he’s off the medication, he isn’t sure he can be any more.

“Scarecrow,” the Joker says. He is a study in perpetual motion, a shifting of weight and expressions. Jonathan waves him closer.

It was tempting, while he was mixing up the pilfered chemicals, to do damage. So many options. But this is a peace offering. One which the Joker will never make. If they are going to work together, Jonathan will have to be the bigger man. 

“Sit,” Jonathan says, gesturing to the chair he’s commandeered for this evening’s clash of personalities.

The Joker does as he’s told, and now that he’s in the cage of light, Jonathan can see, under his own regulation scrubs, Joker has his argyle socks back on. It seems as though they’re on the same page. Jonathan puts a hand on his shoulder and pushes him down and back. “Close your eyes,” he says.

He’s not sure what it says about their relationship that this time the Joker does as he’s told. Jonathan doubts very much that it’s a sign of contrition. It doesn’t matter. He tips the chemicals over the Joker’s head and lets the excess run into the sink.

“I’d take it as a favour if you refrained from mocking me overmuch,” Jonathan says, counting the seconds.

“I figured it out,” Joker says, eyes still closed. He’s smiling. “First the attack, then the, heh, dealing…it’s all perfectly clear now. Why you’re not trying to make me the next Two-Face, as handsome as he was, I think the look might be too much, you think?”

Jonathan turns the tap on, rinsing the chemicals down the drain. “You’ll have to elaborate. Sit up.”

“Why you started peddling your wares.” Joker gets up and peers at himself in the one, crooked mirror. “Interesting.” It’s hard to tell in the half-light, but the Joker’s curls are now a rather noxious shade of green.

Jonathan mentally pats himself on the back. He’s been busy, when Joker hasn’t been watching. Jonathan steps up close into the Joker’s space as he turns around, so this time it’s Jonathan backing him up against the countertop. He pulls out the makeshift whiteface he’s managed to put together, and scoops some out with his fingers, smearing it over Joker’s cheek and jaw.

The pipes rattle and clank as somewhere else in the building water is run. They stand in the patchwork of light that comes through the barred window. “It’s not about the money,” Joker says, as Jonathan paints his face with broad strokes, corpse-pale, less white than a deathly grey. “It’s not about taking control of the city, like the League wanted. No, it’s not so lofty or so, ah, arrogant.”

He stands docile while Jonathan fits his thumbs into the curve of his eye, paints the skin black. “You did it for the result, not the outcome.”

Jonathan coats his thumb with lipstick the same shocking red as a head wound and presses it to Joker’s mouth. “I did it because it interests me. Because I enjoy seeing my power over the mind.”

Joker smiles as Jonathan smears the red over his scars. “What about you, Scarecrow,” he says, leaning in, fisting his hand in the front of Jonathan’s shirt. His eyes look black in the dark and all Jonathan can see in them is himself. “What are you afraid of?”

It is silent again as Jonathan moves his hand away from between them, his face tipped up so they’re sharing the same cold air. “Nothing at all,” he says.

The door opens with a pained screech of hinges, lighting them both up in a wash of florescence and Jonathan doesn’t need to turn around to know they’ve been discovered. Neither of them flinch. In the sudden brightness the Joker is grotesque, stained labcoat and unwashed hair. He is Jonathan’s creature. In the split seconds they have before they are seized and restrained Jonathan remembers what it was like to be the man who created everything. The Joker, the orderlies, the Batman, the ruin of the Narrows. All of it is his.

The knife slides into Joker’s hand and one side of his mouth lifts as the orderlies reach for them. He is still, contained violence, and Jonathan can control that too. He leans in and kisses Joker, thick taste of wax between them. The Joker is laughing when they drag Jonathan off him, sets his teeth in Jonathan’s bottom lip so it splits and bleeds, knife hidden.

Jonathan goes limp in the hands of the orderlies, head tipped back, blood and lipstick bright on his mouth and chin as he laughs.

*~*~*~*

Joker comes to him two nights later in his suit. They’ve cropped his hair again, but what’s left is still green and his face is painted. He tosses Jonathan his mask.

“Couldn’t find an ill-fitting, off the, heh, rack suit to go with it,” he says, holding out a customized straightjacket and the noose Jonathan wears instead of a tie these days. “Where do they keep your gas?”

“And the explosives?” Jonathan asks, pulling his mask on over his head. It spits static and he realizes whatever sparked out in the voice modulator has been badly repaired.

Joker cocks his head to one side, knife in his hand, the other held out in a sweeping ‘after you’ gesture. “If it’s not too much trouble, doctor.”

“Scarecrow,” he corrects, and his voice has returned to him.

End.


End file.
